Better Labs, Better Health Care in Africa
March 21, 2011
A new organization aims to sharply improve the quality of African laboratories, allowing health professionals to better track, treat and test for diseases.
It’s called the African Society for Laboratory Medicine, or ASLM.
“It’s basically an independent, not-for-profit entity that is organized on the continent of Africa to focus on the growing demand for really high quality medical and research laboratories throughout Africa,” says Dr. Blair Holladay, executive vice-president of the American Society for Clinical Pathology. The ASCP has helped train many African lab technicians.
“The laboratory serves as 70 percent of the information that’s used for a patient to be treated for disease. So without a laboratory or without the infrastructure set-up, over 70 percent of diseases cannot be treated effectively and/or even treated. So patients go untreated,” he says.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Dr. John Nkengasong, director of its laboratory program, started efforts to form the ASLM about a year and a half ago. Now, many policymakers, health and lab professionals, African ministers and international officials are involved.
Holladay says, “That Pan-African society is a body that works for Africa to address the lack of laboratory bodies in Africa and helping for the advancement and the needs for the workforce of the laboratory system, so we can strengthen and lead to a better systematic standardization in African laboratories.”
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